DirectStorage sure sounds as that there will be some improvement, albeit assuming you aren't running GPU at full load already, as DirectStorage apparently works mainly at the premise of taking some workload from the CPU and giving it to the GPU, such as to decompress files that get loaded in when walking to a new area in an open-world game. And for current-gen gaming, even slower NVMe SSDs sure are plenty fast. The SN850X is competitive with other high-end PCIe 4.0 drives in sequential workloads, but it can’t quite match the SK hynix Platinum P41 in random IOPS. Pricing is a bit stiff, particularly at 4TB. The SN850X will have to impress to justify its MSRP. Game Mode 2.0, Software and Accessories Soup up your gaming experience with extremely low latency that loads graphics fast with minimal stutter and lagging for smooth, satisfying action. Nonetheless, the SN850X is an impressive drive that stands tall among the already vast selection of mainstream consumer SSDs. Adding the RGB lighting and heat sink option to the drive makes it stand out even further, adding a bit of gaming flair to PC rigs with glass cases.

Insane speeds up to 7,300 MB/s deliver top-tier performance with ridiculously short load times for the elite gaming experience you’ve been waiting for.WD improved performance in sequential read workloads, with a maximum of 7.3GBps from 7.0GBps, and sequential writes improved from up to 5.3GBps to 6.6GBps. Performance in random workloads has also improved significantly, up from a maximum of 1M / 720,000 read and write, respectively, to 1.2M / 1.1M.

Extremely low latency loads graphics fast with minimal stutter and lagging for an incredibly smooth, satisfying gaming experience. A range of capacities from 1TB to 4TB means you get to keep more of today’s games that can take up 200GB or more of storage.

WD's NAND technology still lags behind its competitors, with its 112-Layer BiCS5 flash competing against 176-Layer flash from Micron and SK hynix. However, this has advantages, as WD's mature flash can be carefully and reliably binned. BiCS5 also has 1Tb dies available for higher-capacity SSDs. In our SQL Server application test aimed at developers or homelab users, the SN850X showed a solid 3ms in latency, placing it near the top of the leaderboard of the other tested drives. While it wasn’t leaps and bounds better than its predecessor (the SN850), it did show noticeable improvements over a drive that is still considered a great-performance drive at almost 2 years old. Um novo conjunto de recursos vem com o SN850X, incluindo Predictive Loading, Overhead Balancing e Adaptive Thermal Management 5. PCMark 10 Storage Test is the most advanced and most accurate real-world consumer storage test ever made. There are four different tests you can choose from; we run two of them.

All of these tests leverage the common vdBench workload generator, with a scripting engine to automate and capture results over a large compute testing cluster. This allows us to repeat the same workloads across a wide range of storage devices, including flash arrays and individual storage devices. Our testing process for these benchmarks fills the entire drive surface with data, then partitions a drive section equal to 1% of the drive capacity to simulate how the drive might respond to application workloads. This is different than full entropy tests which use 100% of the drive and take them into a steady state. As a result, these figures will reflect higher-sustained write speeds. WD also implemented new updates to improve thermal consistency and energy efficiency via smoothing out the thermal throttling step function. WD Management Dashboard Recognized for its blend of speed, dependability, and practical features, this SSD delivers an advanced thermal regulation system as well. This innovative feature diligently works to maintain ideal operating temperatures, effectively preventing overheating and ensuring consistent high-speed operation. In addition, the SN850X gains a considerable advantage in the competitive SSD market through its compatibility with Western Digital's dashboard management software. This user-friendly platform gives users insights into their SSD's health, status, and space utilisation, and impressively does it instantaneously. SN850X: Price UK UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. We consider it superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs on the actual game itself. This test is in fact the same as running the actual game, just without the inconsistencies inherent to application testing.In short, we believe that this is the world's best way to test an SSDs gaming prowess and accurately compare it against competing SSDs. The 3DMark SSD Gaming Test measures and scores the following:

Starting with SQL average latency, the SN850X posted 3ms, which placed it in the upper part of the consumer NVMe SSD leaderboard. The SN850X had weak random write performance, though it did display an improvement over its predecessor with a peak of 187K IOPS at a latency of 678.7µs (vs. 173K IOPS and 733.9µs for the SN850). Today’s A-list titles can take up 200GB or more of storage. A range of capacities from 1TB to 4TB means you get to keep more games at the ready and get into the action fast. This test uses SQL Server 2014 running on Windows Server 2012 R2 guest VMs and is stressed by Quest’s Benchmark Factory for Databases. StorageReview’s Microsoft SQL Server OLTP testing protocol employs the current draft of the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Benchmark C (TPC-C), an online transaction-processing benchmark that simulates the activities found in complex application environments. The 1TB model is quoted with slightly lower numbers in sequential writes with 6.3GB/s, while random reads are a bit lower as well with 800,000 IOPS. The endurance rating is 600 TBW (total bytes written) for the 1TB, 1,200 TBW (2TB) and 2,400 TBW (4TB) with an MTTF rating of 1.75 million hours.

Game Mode 2.0 also features an advanced “read look ahead” algorithm, which predicts and pre-emptively caches what is next in the game. WD indicates that this is done by allowing the SN850X’s controller to detect incoming low queue depth, sequential workloads, claiming that it will help speed up in-game loading of scenes, levels and other areas.